Rachel McBrinn, Winding Up Body, publication, 2023
Cover Typography: Effie Type
Publication by Rachel McBrinn in collaboration with the Winding Up Body, commissioned as part of a research-led residency with Rhubaba. Alison Scott’s introductory essay Space Left Over After Planning is co-comissioned by MAP Magazine.
The publication takes as its foundation a transcript from the second reading of the New Towns Bill, a debate which took place in the UK House of Commons on 8th May 1946. Each page has been annotated and reshaped by a group of co-editors with a connection to Livingston, collectively known as the Winding Up Body: Chizu Anucha, Shirley Cameron, Diane Crompton, Rachel McBrinn, Jo Richardson, Dean Swift and Janet Wood.
Each member of the group was allocated 11 pages to read and edit. These form the chapters of the publication—each contribution separated from the next by pages filled with pebbledash. Working independently, they each highlighted, underlined, and annotated the text based on where they identified subjectivity on the part of the speaker, early hopes or plans for the new town project, and ideas that resonated with their own lived experiences of Livingston New Town.
These activities served as catalysts for conversation, deep reflection, and as a place to begin to entangle prospective and retrospective viewpoints on the New Town narrative. The remainder of the document was then redacted, giving way to images which populate the space left behind by the lost words—research imagery and stills from Are you going my way? (2023), a film which emerged from these conversations.
Excerpts of Winding Up Body are published online here by MAP Magazine.
Published in 2023 as an edition of 100.
Production Support: Alison Scott
Cover Typography & Design Consult: Effie Type
Stockists:
Fruitmarket Gallery Bookshop, Edinburgh
Good Press, Glasgow and online
NewBridge Books, Newcastle
BOOKS Peckham, London